Punctuation
Punctuation is the placement of punctuation marks, such as periods, commas and exclamation points, in a written text. Applying and using punctuation correctly within a text facilitates its reading and comprehension. When reading, punctuation tells something about the structure and meaning of the text and highlights pauses and intonation.
For example, dots, question marks and exclamation points mark the end of one sentence - and the beginning of the next. Here, an exclamation mark adds emphasis or emotion to a sentence, and a question can be identified as such by ending it with a question mark. Commas can be used for enumerations within a sentence, for placing a sub-sentence, or giving an example, as here.
Punctuation includes the use of quotation marks, hyphens, colons, semicolons and parentheses. These are used, among other things, to mark quotes, enumerations, explanations and to separate side issues from the main message of a sentence. In most cases, a punctuation mark is followed by a space. Sometimes there is also a space before the punctuation mark.
The word punctuation comes from Latin: "inter" means "between" and "punctus" is "point.